Dangers Of Energy Drinks

Are Energy Drinks Secretly Deadly? This May Shed The Light

In 2003, WWE wrestler Stone Cold Steve Austin was preparing for Wrestlemania XIX. Austin had been on a leave of absence for three months and this was to be his final match before retiring. He wanted to put on a good show for the fans and had been hitting the gym hard for weeks. At the time, it was his habit to drink 3-5 energy drinks and two pots of coffee every day. The day before the event, he woke up, drank two Red Bulls and a pot of coffee. He noticed the muscles of his leg and foot twitching but wrote it off as nerves.

Though feeling worn down, Austin went about his day. He put in a half-hearted workout at the gym, signed autographs for fans, and returned to his hotel. As soon as he got off the elevator, disaster struck. [1]

“Damn, I think I’m dying, dying for sure,” he said. “I’m getting off the elevator and my heart’s beating so hard it feels like it’s going to crack a rib jumping out of my chest. My heartbeat might be doing 160 or 180 beats per minute. My legs are shaking and I can’t make them stop. This is scaring the hell out of me. I’m saying to myself, I’m thirty-eight years old and I’m fixing to freaking die, right here, right now. I’m sure I’m having a heart attack.”

Austin was hospitalised. Fortunately, the attack turned out to be severe heart palpitations, not a myocardial infarction. After five bags of IV fluid and a night of observation, Austin was released the next day. He went on to face Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson at Wrestlemania XIX. Austin blames his over-consumption of energy drinks for the attack.

Others were not nearly so lucky.

In 2011, 16-year-old Sara Milosevic went to a party with a friend. She drank several pre-mixed alcoholic energy drinks. A few hours later she was vomiting violently. Everyone just assumed she couldn’t handle the alcohol. She called her parents to pick her up at 11 pm. By 3 am, Sara was dead. Her blood-alcohol content was only .04—not even enough to be considered legally drunk in any state in the U.S. Sara’s father, a chemist, says the energy drinks caused her death. [2,3]

Also in 2011, just days before Christmas, 14-year-old Anais Fournier suffered a fatal heart attack. In the two days before her death, she drank a total of just four Monster energy drinks. In all, Anais consumed 480 mg of caffeine. That’s less than one-tenth the official fatal dosage of the stimulant, but five times more than is recommended for adolescents. Her official cause of death is listed as “cardiac arrhythmia due to caffeine toxicity.” Doctors speculated that the energy drinks agitated a pre-existing genetic heart condition. [4]

In 2015, Martin Bowling suffered a heart attack after drinking eight energy drinks at a pub. He was 28-years-old. Bowling survived but he had been spending $150 a week on energy drinks.

“I’d been drinking them for about seven years and it was like I’d become mentally addicted. Now I see those drinks as death in a can,” says Bowling. [6,7]

Between 2004 and 2014, energy drinks have officially been a factor in at least 34 deaths.[8] Caffeine deaths may be under-reported or attributed to other factors, and some doctors suspect that the actual number may be much higher.[9] Thousands more people have been hospitalised with symptoms including insomnia, anxiety, convulsions, high blood pressure, convulsions, heart attacks, and other cardiovascular complications. The wings energy drinks give you might come with a harp and halo.

The Health Dangers of Energy Drinks

Energy drinks are popular among gamers, students, athletes, professionals, and anyone who has to drive overnight from one end of the country to the other. We all need a little energy boost now and then, but there are healthier ways to get it than energy drinks. Energy drinks are a chemical cocktail of caffeine, sugars, and a variety of other ingredients. Some of these, like herbs and vitamins, may even sound kind of healthy. But what is it that can make energy drinks dangerous?

Excess Sugar

There are two main dangers to energy drinks — neurological and cardiological. In other words, your nervous system and your heart. The catalysts to these problems are also the very ingredients that make you feel energised — copious amounts of caffeine and sugar.

Energy drinks can contain up to 78 grams of sugar per serving. That’s 20 teaspoons of sugar every time you drink one.[10] Admittedly, that’s the high side of the scale, but these drinks average about 30 grams of sugar and 280 calories a can. That’s not health food. If keeping trim is your goal, drinking an energy drink just made your job 280 calories harder. That’s about 35 minutes of burpees.

Even if you keep fit enough to stave off diabetes and weight gain, sugar isn’t done ruining your health. Excess sugar is one of the leading contributors to heart disease. One study found that people whose daily caloric intake included 25% or more sugar were more than twice as likely to die from heart disease as those whose diets contained less than 10% sugar. [11]

Many companies have sugar or calorie-free versions of their product. But the sugar is replaced with artificial sweeteners like aspartame that may be even worse for your health. They can interfere with your gut biome, damage your metabolism, encourage obesity, and cause diabetes.[12,13,14]

Caffeine

Exact amounts vary, but the average can of energy drink contains about 70-100 mg of caffeine – about as much as a cup of coffee.[15] That doesn’t sound very dangerous, and to a healthy adult, it usually isn’t. You likely know someone who drinks six cups of coffee a day with no apparent side effects. Maybe you are that person.

Caffeine is toxic but generally safe in small doses. The problem is that the caffeine, combined with the other stimulants in a high-energy drink can trigger existing health problems. These could include genetic disorders that you don’t even know about yet. This is likely what happened in the case of Anais Fournier. She consumed only two energy drinks in the 24 hours before her death. That’s not much, but it was apparently enough. Anais had a heart condition called mitral valve prolapse, a relatively common condition that affects 1 in 20 Americans. [4]

Energy drink manufacturers maintain that their products are safe when consumed in recommended amounts. Do you know what the maximum recommended intake is? For most brands, it’s just two or three cans per day. For some. That’s just one session. I know guys playing World of Warcraft who consider three cans a good start to a slow day.

It’s easy to miss these warnings. Manufacturers usually hide them in small print on the back of the can with the other nutritional info that no one reads. And that’s if it’s on there at all. Make no mistake, beverage companies want you to drink as much of their product as possible. The warnings seem to be more of an effort to protect companies legally.

A 2014 study suggested that young people using energy drinks may be on the rise. The research estimated that 68% of adolescents and 18% of children under 10 years old consume energy drinks.[16] Unlike cigarettes and alcohol, there are usually no age restrictions on energy drinks. In Sweden, sales of some types of energy drinks are restricted to pharmacies and sales to children are outright banned.[16]

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), energy drinks have a “proven negative effect on children.”[16] Nearly 50% people who overdose on caffeine are under 19 years old.[17] Adolescents should limit themselves to no more than 100 mg of caffeine a day. For children, the healthy amount is zero.[18]

Combined With Alcohol

In the early 2000’s, eager for new profits, energy drink companies started marketing to the bar crowd. They urged bartenders to promote mixed alcohol and energy drinks like Jägerbombs and Red Bull vodkas. Sorry to be Johnny Buzzkill, but combining energy drinks with alcohol increases the dangers of both. Caffeine is a stimulant, while alcohol is a depressant. Combining the two in your body can mess up your system.

One way this manifests is as a “delayed drunk” feeling. The stimulant masks some of the sensory cues you normally rely on to determine your level of intoxication. In other words, you’re drunk, with the same loss of cognition and motor skills as usual, but you don’t know it. This means that you will likely drink far more, and far faster than you normally would.

Caffeine doesn’t change your actual blood alcohol level, just your perception of it. That means that as you drink more to hit your buzz, all the usual dangers of drinking are magnified. One study found that people who mixed alcohol and energy drinks were more than twice as likely to drink drive and far more likely to be a passenger in a car with a drunk driver.[19] The urge to drink more also increases your risk of alcohol poisoning. If all that isn’t enough, your hangover will be worse, too.[20]

In 2010, the FDA in the US sent out warning letters to energy drink companies about the public health threat of pre-mixed alcoholic energy drinks. [21] Pre-mixed alcoholic energy drinks almost completely disappeared from U.S. store shelves soon after. That won't stop you from ordering a mixed energy drink in a bar, but I would caution against it.

The Effect of Energy Drinks on Athletic Performance

Energy drinks are popular among athletes for their supposed performance-enhancing effects. But actually, energy drinks can actually ruin long term athletic performance.

Studies on the actual performance enhancing effects have revealed mixed results. Some studies find a minor boost, while others have found no performance enhancing effects at all.[22] The truth is that there’s no magic winning formula inside one of those cans. Any perceived performance enhancing effects can come from the simple formula of caffeine plus carbs, and there are healthier ways to get those.

Our bodies quickly build up a high tolerance for substances like caffeine and sugar. Prolonged overuse tends to have undesirable side effects. With sugar, it’s weight gain and diabetes. Caffeine reactions frequently include bowel instability, mood swings, and anxiety. Both can cause insomnia and other sleep disorders. A study published in the British Journal of Nutrition found that energy drinks significantly increased insomnia and nervousness in athletes.[23]

A Hidden Toxin: Aluminium

There’s one more potential source of toxicity in energy drinks that you probably haven’t thought of – the can. Aluminium cans have been the standard beverage container for decades, but aluminium is actually toxic to the human body. Obviously, no one is eating their can after sucking down a beverage (I hope). However, energy soft drinks are generally acidic, and trace amounts of aluminium will contaminate the beverage itself. The average American ingests about 7-9 milligrams of aluminium per day in food and drink.[24] These tiny amounts usually aren’t harmful, but higher amounts can cause disorders in the brain, bones, and nervous system including confusion, muscle weakness, brittle bones, and seizures. In children, aluminium toxicity can slow development.[25]

If you ingest a tiny amount of aluminium, your body’s natural healing processes can usually filter the toxins out. Consuming an excessive amount of canned beverages over a prolonged period of time is a different story. If toxic material builds up, it can overwhelm your system. Those with existing kidney problems are especially at risk because of a reduced capacity to filter toxins.[24]

The best thing you can do to quench thirst is mix up your own beverages fresh at home, but that’s not always practical. If you must buy pre-packaged beverages, I recommend only buying those in glass containers.

Energy Drink Alternatives

An overall healthy lifestyle with a proper diet, plenty of rest, and regular exercise is really the best thing you can do to feel energised. However, there are times when everyone needs an extra little boost of energy. If energy drinks are off the table, what are your best options?

Ginseng

Most energy drinks market themselves as containing ginseng. Ginseng itself is great stuff. It improves energy, appetite, and sleep quality.[26] However, the ginseng in energy drinks is cheap, processed, low-quality, and present in such tiny amounts that its therapeutic effect is non-existent. [27] Add in the health-ruining amounts of sugar and shady ingredients, and ginseng’s benefits are not just wiped out, but reversed.

Why not just cut out the chemical cocktail and go straight to the source? I highly recommend a high-quality ginseng supplement. Ginseng effectiveness is dependent on quality, and quality varies considerably. Do your homework. Only buy from a company that uses natural ingredients and is 100% transparent about sourcing.

Vitamin B12

If you feel constantly drained, you may be vitamin B12 deficient. B12 deficiency leads to low red blood cell count — a type of anaemia. Symptoms include fatigue, weakness, and difficulty concentrating.[29, 30] Red meat, molluscs, and dairy are the richest sources of B12. There are non-meat sources, but If you follow a vegan or vegetarian diet (as I do), you may want to consider a quality B12 supplement.

Black and Green Tea

If you absolutely need that caffeine boost in the morning, at least find it from a better source than energy drinks. Black or green tea can provide a similar mental boost. Tea has less caffeine than energy drinks and causes fewer sleep disruptions.[31] According to two double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled studies, black tea improves attention and self-reported alertness. [32] The combination of theanine and caffeine, naturally occurring ingredients in tea, improves cognitive performance. [33]

I recommend that tea option for adults and teens only, this one is not for children. While tea has significantly less caffeine than energy drinks, any caffeine at all is a potential health risk to a developing brain and body.

Nuts

If you need some quick energy, try a handful of nuts. Nuts are nutrient-dense and help your body sustain high energy levels. [34] In addition to high-quality protein, they also provide carotenoids, phenolic acids, phytosterols, and flavonoids. These nutrients promote physical and mental well-being, helping the body sustain higher energy levels. Walnuts, almonds, cashews, hazelnuts, macadamias, pecans, and pistachios will give you the best bang for your buck. [35]

Water

If you’re feeling irritable and tired you may actually be slightly dehydrated. Studies show that even mild dehydration can cause drastic changes in mood and energy levels. [36,37] It’s important to stay properly hydrated, especially when exercising. Leave the brightly coloured sports drinks at home. Blue dye isn’t going to help you. “Electrolytes” is just a fancy marketing word for potassium and salt. It is necessary to replace lost minerals after an intense workout. You can get the safe effect by adding a pinch of Himalayan crystal salt to regular old water.

Exercise

It may sound counterintuitive, but exercise will actually make you feel less tired. Regular exercise is the best for energy levels, weight control, and overall quality of life. [38] In a pinch , even five minutes of light, low-intensity exercise can boost your mood, concentration, and energy levels. [39]

Get Enough Sleep

Tired? Here’s a crazy thought: have you tried sleeping? I know, I know, who has time to sleep? A ten-minute nap will do wonders for your immediate energy levels. In the long term, I strongly recommend getting a proper amount of sleep every night. Some people need more, some less, but the conventional wisdom figure of 8 hours a sleep a night is a good rule of thumb.

Do you even know anyone who gets eight hours of sleep per night? You’re more likely to know someone who brags about only getting four. An unfortunate byproduct of the modern lifestyle is this bizarre idea that proper sleep equals weakness. Tell your boss that you can’t come in early because it would cut into your 8 hours of sleep and you’ll be lucky if he just laughs at you. Closers don’t sleep.

This mentality is pure self-destructive madness. You need sleep. Think of your body as a car. It needs both fuel and maintenance. Nutrition is your body’s fuel and sleep is your maintenance time. If you give a car subpar fuel and zero maintenance, even a Maserati won’t make it to 100,000 miles.

Ultimately, no energy-boosting product is a substitute for sleep. Caffeine doesn’t give you energy, it fools your body into not noticing how tired it is. All you’re doing is buying a little extra time now. There will be a price to be paid for it later.

If you aren’t getting enough sleep, a tanker truck full of caffeinated sugar water isn’t going to help in the long run. And that truck may just run you down.

Kammerer, Maximiliano et al. “Effects of Energy Drink Major Bioactive Compounds on the Performance of Young Adults in Fitness and Cognitive Tests: A Randomized Controlled Trial.” Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition 11 (2014): 44. PMC. Web. 27 June 2016.